MBA Project: Modeling California's EV Mandate's Electrical Grid Impact

For my Energy and the Environment class, we examined the impact of California mandating EV-only vehicle sales by 2035 on the electrical grid. We combined data on vehicle sales trends and forecasts, current electrical generation, and data on where and when people charged their EVs to understand both how much instantaneous load the grid could experience, as well as the impact that charging behaviors would have on the "duck curve".

Presently, the CA grid relies heavily on solar power for renewable generation, but without large scale storage options, the grid experiences an ever-steepening change in demand for non-renewable sources in the evening. If everyone drives home from work and plugs in their EVs at home, that only exacerbates this generation issue, and has us still charging our EVs with largely non-renewable power.

Fundamentally, significant efforts to shape consumer behavior are necessary to: a) ensure EV charging occurs throughout the day, to avoid massive spikes in demand, b) maximize the amount of renewable energy that is used for EV charging, and c) better utilize V2G technology as a distributed storage system.

Our full report is here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fLxEMx7cDmZfinfc9jCZXw4asMOMv1J2/view?usp=sharing